Saturday, March 22, 2014

Our basic training experience was an
orientation class that we had very little interest in. But we didn't
get to start veterinary school without sitting through this. So we
sat through this.

Our friends endured a more significant
basic training before heading out to Viet Nam, so we had little to
complain about. But we complained....anyway.

I was nineteen. The oldest guy in the
class was 40. We nicknamed him, “Gramps”. Five had masters
degrees already. Most all already had at least one bachelors degree.
Some had two. I had two years of undergrad under my belt. Five women
had been admitted. The class was 71 men, and those 5 ladies. And the
term “second class citizen” landed firmly on the ladies' backs.
They had to prove they were up for the challenge. And they damn well
better not quit to have babies, because that's what everyone
expected.

It was 1968. The world was a tad bit
different then.

We all wanted to become veterinarians.
And the doctors teaching the orientation class intended to teach us
what that meant. What we learned wasn't exactly what we expected it
should be. These teachers were REALLY old, and we wondered why we
must endure them.

Veterinary Medicine had been important
for many years before we came along. Decades. A century. More. It had
served the farmer, and the horseman. It did the best it could, which
was considerable because a small number of truly dedicated,
inventive, brilliant, adaptive men figured ways to keep horses sound
and farm animals productive.

But there was that other side to our
calling, the witchcraft and the charlatan too. Veterinarians were
known as “Horse Doctors” The blue ointment worked better than the
red one, when the only difference was the coloring agent. And some
worked for the money while most others worked dedicated to helping
the farmer and the animals.

The men who taught us were the men who
during their lifetimes had dragged our profession into the modern
world. These were the men who changed things, rid us of the
charlatans and the quacks, elevated our passion into something that
warranted the title profession. They improved the training, applied
the ethics and enforced the ethics, and they were damn sure going to
teach us to do the same. We were to inherit their baby, and they
wanted us to appreciate it, protect it, perfect it.

We were going to be practicing
medicine. We were going to behave as professionals. Our ethics would
drive our behavior, not greed or pride. Look around the
room....brilliant educated dedicated professionals....colleagues, not
competitors. We would hold ourselves to the highest obtainable
standards. And the animals and their people would benefits from this.
So we all would win.

We would not disparage our colleagues
to enrich ourselves.

We would be honest to a fault.

We would not advertise, self
aggrandize, lie cheat or steal.

We were professionals. And if we worked
hard enough, and sacrificed enough, and achieved enough, we would
earn the respect that went with this claim.

And we would refer to ourselves as
Veterinarians. We were not to be “Doc”. We would not be the
“Vet”. Were were Veterinarians. And yes, we learned how to spell
the word. Weren't gonna be no vetinaries in this group.

And through this we found ourselves
joining a profession. We were proud. We even earned a degree of
respect in the real world. Not like “real doctors” of course, but
we did OK. People could trust us. Many did trust us. And we helped
them and their animals.

Over time we became really good at this
helping animals thing. In the decades of my career we changed
Veterinary Medicine into something I would not have recognized at the
beginning. Our training became so very much better. Our medicine got
ever so much better. A set of blood tests that once yielded
information a week later after we mailed them to a lab 300 miles away
soon became an over night set of numbers, and then an hour's wait
while the machine right there in our office spewed out the results.
The x-rays got better, and then we gained access to endoscopy,
ultrasound, cat scan and even MRI. Oh, we could do so much more to
help.

We've conquered diseases that were the
scourge of the animal world. We fix things now that were certain
death 40 years ago. We have become so good at preventing some
diseases that our critics claim we invented those diseases just to
scare folks into spending the money they'd rather spend in casinos
and bars.

A days drive to a specialist became
twenty minutes across town. Anybody could get world class medicine to
save their precious pet in a time of need.

If they wanted to.

My career has spanned the time that can
only be described as the golden age of veterinary medicine. This
profession has grown, matured, improved so very much as I have
watched and participated. We've become damn good at what we do. We
are so much more wonderful than when I began. We can offer so much to
the animals and their people.

Problem is, we've left some folks
behind. And a lot of those folks are our clients. These left behind
folks don't want all that we can do to help them. They want the less
exciting, less effective, less intimidating, less expensive version
we used to offer. As one once told me in total honesty. He didn't
want it done right. He just wanted something less done.

Veterinary Medicine has always adapted
to the needs of our clients and their animals. Here's the best way to
fix that broken leg. Well yeah doc, that's nice, but doncha have a
cheaper way? Well, it's not as good, but back in the day we used to
do this, and it might work. Do that doc. Sometimes this worked,
despite the odds, and we were the heroes.

And when it didn't work....well that
was the doctor's fault.

Veterinarians want to do the best job
possible to help the animals and their people. Some people want this.
Some can afford this. Others cannot, or more often simply choose not.
And so we do the best we can with what people let us do.

We hold ourselves to a much higher
standard than even our most strident, malicious critics. We want to
offer the best. We want to be the best. We lay awake nights wondering
if we have done our best. And our clients beg, bargain, connive,
demand that we do something less than the best, and when we don't
they hate us, and when it goes wrong they hate us. I've had clients
scream at me because I will not commit overt malpractice for their
convenience, or their wallet.

This is hard.

None of this is new. Read between the
lines in “All Creatures Great and Small”. That was pre-war
England, but it happened back then, too. Through all those decades of
my experience, the Golden Years of Veterinary Medicine, it happened
every day. It still does.

But this is going to change.

Law schools now offer classes in how to
sue veterinarians. Veterinarians have always carried insurance
against malpractice suits. That is our reality. But now the lawyers
are seriously sniffing around us.

Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes
we do the wrong thing, hoping it will somehow turn out to be the
right thing. Sometimes we shrug our shoulders and do the shitty job
the client demands of us. And the outcome is bad. Sometimes....we
simply are not perfect.

Well hell....sue the bastard.

Everybody sues everybody in America.
Win a big lawsuit and retire. Play the lawsuit lottery. Listen to the
ads on afternoon TV. Sue for this injury, about that drug, because of
that product. Good thing the lawyers are looking out for those folks
who sit around most every afternoon watching TV. Sue the bastards.

Veterinarians exist to care for
animals. But this only happens because people care enough about the
animals that they will ask us to help. If people didn't care, we'd be
doing something else. But now, because people care, the lawyers can
smell a profit. Because if they can prove that we injured a person
because the outcome for an animal was not perfect, the lawyers want
to turn this into really large pieces of money, as compensation.
Sure, they will take a bit of this money for their efforts, but they
can dangle the lawsuit lottery in front of people who already hate
veterinarians.... and this is coming soon.

Suppose the rewards from suing
veterinarians reach the levels the lawyers want. What happens next?

Well, what happened when they did this
to the physicians?

Remember “defensive medicine”?
That's what the physicians were forced to do...are forced to do, as
they try to help in a hostile environment that will bankrupt the
doctor if a less than perfect outcome results. Wonder what wrecked
human medicine leading to the abortion known as Obamacare? Ask a
lawyer.

Ever beg your veterinarian to pass on
the blood tests before she cleaned your dog's teeth because you
didn't want to spend those few extra bucks?

Well, forget that ever happening again.
All those things veterinarians have done to try to help the less
committed animal owner, the corners we've cut, for the less wealthy
animal owner, the most ignorant animal owner, the liar and
cheat....well forget that. Don't even ask. All those things
veterinarians have done to compromise doing their best possible job
to help the animals and their people will never ever happen again,
because the doctors will now have to protect themselves from the
consequences of not being perfect.

Every person who has hated his
veterinarian for insisting on doing things correctly, every person
who had lamented the cost of doing things correctly, every jerk who
has accused veterinarians of just doing things for the money.....
well get used to it.

You can beg, cajole, insult, nag...to
get us to cut those corners. But you will not get your wish.

We will be forced to do things
correctly. We will have no choice.

We will be doing what those old guys
who lectured us in our basic training class urged us to do, because
it was the right thing to do, and some of you will hate it. But you
know what? Get used to it, for we will no longer have the choice of
choosing malpractice to keep you happy. We can't afford that luxury
anymore.

Welcome to our world. Too bad it took
greedy lawyers to make you all realize this. Hope you all enjoy it as
much as we will.

Thank a lawyer, for if experience bears
out, you sure as hell won't thank your veterinarian.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

A different perspective sent in by an intern - what? We aren't all perfect? You don't say.... great job, KittySurg.

Hi Readers, KittySurg here. I am
writing in hope of raising awareness of another issue I see as a great
contributor to the high suicide rate in our field. Indeed, performing 4
euthanasias in one day, dealing with Velcro Martha who needs a video of her cat
devouring kibble at 2 am to prove the techs aren’t lying, and finding lung mets
in your favorite patient can be extremely stressful, but what sends me over the
edge at the end of the day is having to deal with some of my asshole superiors
and frankly peers, who are so overconfident as to believe that they are always
right.

We are a field packed to the brim
with type A self-absorbed individuals striving for perfection. The prevailing proclivities
are to criticize oneself or criticize others. There is precious little teamwork
going on, and support of each other is something we simply don’t have time for.

In the November 15, JAVMA article,
“Finding Calm Amid the Chaos,” the consensus from various studies seems to be
that those veterinarians transitioning from training to practice seem to be at
the greatest risk of depression and suicidal ideation. Entering a new career is
always difficult, but working 80-100 hours a week, never seeing family, and
living on the poverty line while interest on student debt accrues, can be
hellish. If this is coupled with criticism rather than support, one can reach a
tippling point, and believe me, many of us have been dangling over the edge.

The fragility of those navigating
their first years in practice is a well know fact in Australia and the
Netherlands, both of whom have mentor programs that pair newly graduated
veterinarians with more experienced colleagues, who help them negotiate their
first years in practice and offer general support and advice. I believe that the AVMA should be arranging the same type of
mentorship, given the current struggles amid my generation of veterinarians.

Sure, interns and new doctors make
mistakes. Constructive criticism is welcome and helpful. I recall giving
long-acting insulin IM rather than SQ. The particular criticalist in charge was
firm, but nice about my error, much to my great appreciation. She apparently
understood that I wasn’t going to learn any more if I’d been able to see the
steam blowing out of her ears.

Obviously, constructive criticism for
medical mistakes is not the problem I am trying to address. Let’s get back to
the topic of unsupportive asshole superiors…

During the first month of my
internship, I made what apparently was an insufferable constellation of
blunders: I RSVP’d late to the intern dinner, failed to greet a technician in
the hall on my first day, wrote in a record that my patient’s anxiety made it
difficult to tell if he was painful, and asked Visiting Southern Surgeon if
there was a reason not to use a larger holding pin as I watched his 1.6 mm K
wire bend under the stress of an overzealous rotation that probably should have
been augmented by a cranial closing wedge osteotomy. These mistakes were deemed
so serious that they landed me in the office our Very Blonde and Very Crass
Hospital Administrator, who has already told our intern class 10 times that she
was Business Woman of The Year in our state (after nominating herself 5 years
in a row, a detail which she has selectively omitted every time.) VBVC, with
her coral lipstick running several millimeters beyond her lip line, asked me
why I couldn’t tell the difference between anxiety and pain. “What the hell did
you learn in vet school?” she asked, quizzically. “With all due respect,
Ma’am,” I learned that animals do not talk.

When I asked Visiting Southern
Surgeon about using a larger holding pin, he put down his instruments, looked
me in the eye, and told me to “shuuut up.” Later that night when we were
finishing up records, he turned to me and told me interns were to be seen and
not heard, and that, in one millions years, no question or comment I had during
surgery would prove to be useful or correct. “Ahh’m just tryin’ to help you,
girl,” he said, with his condescendingly chummy Alabama drawl.

This surgeon’s assumption that the
intern is always wrong, and in fact, to blame, has played out perpetually
during my year.

Last week, I saw a patient with
vestibular disease and a long-term history of otitis externa. I believed that
the otitis was a red herring and that the patient had central signs. The
attending, Dr. Perfectly Practical disagreed and spent 5 minutes telling me
what an idiot I was for missing the obvious—the patient already had otitis, a
source of vestibular insult; why would I look elsewhere for an etiology? I was
vindicated and (amazingly enough) apologized to when the MRI revealed a giant
cerebellar tumor, but I'd spent the morning feeling useless and ignorant.

Then there was the time when I felt
my tiny chihuahua patient with a long-term chronic bleed and resultant regenerative
anemia (PCV 18) should remain in hospital. Because the source of his chronic
bleed had been “fixed,” the attending, Dr. Holier Than Thou Ain’t Never Been
Wrong felt he should go home. Yes, the area had been debrided, I thought, but
it hadn’t been closed. Little Rembrandt wasn't clinical for his anemia, but I
believed he should be in a place that could provide blood transfusion, should
he become clinical. Dr. HTT, in so many words, conveyed to me that I had no
clinical judgment whatsoever. Yep, time to go work at Starbucks, or better yet,
jump off a cliff, I thought. Starbucks won’t even put a dent in my debt. Sure
enough, overnight, the little Chihuahua developed tachycardia and bounding
pulses. PCV had dropped even further. HTT never apologized—no surprise there.

The next incident involved "Spikey",
a cat with paraparesis and pelvic limb ataxia. Spikey needed an MRI, but our
MRI couldn't provide appropriate resolution for a creature as small as a cat,
so we gave his owners the option of going a few hours away for a stronger MRI
or staying here at the hospital for CT/myelogram. Our neurologist had left the
practice, and trying not to lose our neuro clientele, we had been given scripts
by our Very Blonde and Very Crass Hospital Administrator in response to client
questions. One such script stated that all of our surgeons are proficient in
CT, myelogram, MRI, and all neurological conditions. Sure Thing, Blondy.

Of course, in spite of these scripts,
our Interviewed in Flip Flops Saturday Surgeon from the Virgin Islands had not yet
learned to use CT. He'd been here several months, but couldn’t manage to drag
his ass to the hospital on a day off (he has 3 every week) to learn how to
operate it. The radiologist (who I actually like and respect) was able to
operate it, and was slated to be present on the morning my patient needed the
CT. All was a go. No one said anything to the contrary in rounds that morning,
and Flip Flops had never said that his morning appointments would preclude
fitting this in. He said he might have to call in the head surgeon if he got
stuck, but this was a "might," and I'd gotten permission from the
owners to do the imaging the following day if things got too booked.

This said, I was quite surprised late
that morning to learn that Dr. Flip Flops had decided that CT/myelo was out of
the question for several different conflicting reasons provided to me by Dr.
HTT and later, Dr. Flip Flops himself. I was now supposed to lie to the client
and say we felt the cat needed an MRI. I'd had a decent relationship with the
client, but he was incensed when I told him that, out of the blue, we'd decided
CT/myelogram was going to be useless. Wooden Q Tip (not to be confused with the
plastic, pliable variety), the head surgeon, read my client communication (and
from home, nonetheless). He grew frustrated with Dr. Flip Flops, and offered to
come in and do the CT/myelo himself. Great! Time for the intern to change the
story on the client again. Frankly, I felt the clients should just hit up the
MRI at the other hospital and give them the business, because we couldn't get
our act together and worse, we had lied about it.

The confusion and frustration led to displacement
of blame. Where? To the Scapegoat Intern. Where else? Dr. Flip Flops told Dr.
Wooden Q Tip that he'd asked me to arrange for him to be there to help run the
CT, etc. etc, and I got an earful from everyone involved. Q Tip screamed at me
over the phone, “You and everyone else there are useless; completely useless, “
he said. Flip Flops told me I was a waste of his time, and Very Blonde and Very
Crass marched downstairs from her corner office and took the case away from me.
“Flip Flops and HTT will be handling the case from here on out, she said.” She
was nice about it, so I have reason to believe she saw that I was right, but in
a pinch, had to apologize to the clients and blame Scapegoat Intern, who didn't
know the ropes; Spikey’s owners later came to visit him in the hospital and
looked right through me, as if never having met me. After his CT, Spikey became
intractably fractious and impossible to handle. I wished so hard he’d bite the
shit out of Drs. Q Tip and Flip Flops, but sadly, the docs never saw the need
to actually handle him and give him the chance.

I just finished another 100 hour
week, much of which was spent dealing with Velcro Martha, who didn’t believe
her cat was eating in our hospital. Three nights ago, I was in the exam room
with her, trying to explain every alteration in her cat’s fluid rate and why,
if he was fluid-overloaded, we weren’t even bothering to exercise him. Worse, I
had to talk over her 100 year-old mother, who was alternately slurping her Ensure,
farting, and chanting “necky necky, rubby rubby,” while petting the poor cat,
who like me, seemed stifled by Grandma’s fart cloud.

The next morning, on my day off, I
got a call from a client and friend who asked me to euthanize her diabetic dog,
whose blood glucose had grown increasingly difficult to control. In between
sobs, she told me the dog was completely distraught, pawing at the water bowl
and vomiting. It was 6:45 am when she called. She said she lived 30 minutes
away and that it would take her another 30 mins to get ready and get the dog
into the car.

I got to the clinic at 7:45, euthanized
the dog, and was feeling sad about the whole thing, but at the same time, I had
a moment of feeling useful—avery
short moment. As I was leaving, Patronizing Good Ole Boy ER doc/New Dad
approached: “If you meet a client here, you have to be here on time,” he said,
sneering. The client had arrived at 7:20 and told Dr. PGOB
Daddio that they were supposed to meet me at 6:30. I explained to him that the client
was distraught, and had surely had been confused. He rolled his eyes as if to
say “whatever, dumb ass”. “Furthermore,” he said, blood pressure should have
been taken earlier on your renal failure cat.

I have a surgical internship next
year, but unfortunately the ending date of my rotating internship and the
starting date of my surgical internship are June 29 and July 1, respectively,
and also unfortunately, they are on opposite coasts. Neither program will
budge. I can feel it: next year is going to be even better.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

VBB small animal hospital occupies the
street end of the property, with the hedges, bushes, and trees
arrayed to one side across the parking area and scattered about the
back half of our land. We have plenty of room to air our dogs in the
back half (away from the street), and the time spent patiently
waiting whilst the dogs finish their sniffing and their other tasks
can be spent listening to the birds. One bunch of bushes sports red
flowers, and the hummingbirds nest in there. We've had killdeer
nesting in the weeds, and there generally are some mockingbirds and
jays lending their noise. I invite the dogs to go “out” often,
for back there is a haven of sorts away from the crazy and the stress
that packs the inside of the hospital.

It's not a national park back there.
But then I don't need to pack the travel trailer and tug it for hours
to get there. I'm generally better adjusted when I return to the
grind. I love the place for doing that for me.

So perhaps you can understand our
outrage when each spring some folks find our back property the
perfect place to dump pickup loads of garbage, mattresses, old
furniture, and tree prunings. We so look forward to spring cleaning
time.

Oh, and the relative solitude and peace
is a draw for the homeless people who make their nests back in our
bushes. Most times they move in after dark, and move out in the
mornings, unseen except for their trash left behind and the sure
knowledge the local McDonalds has put locks on the bathroom doors, so
they only buzz in their customers. The homeless are now left with
only our bushes and the back walls of the hospital when they need to
go “out”.

For years we were nice guys, and we
didn't hassle them unless their behavior demanded it. Too many
needles back there, too many broken bottles in the parking area, too
many visits from the local police because of too many outstanding
warrants, and we'd tell them to leave. We wouldn't kick them out if it
was raining. We'd give them some time to find a new nest. But we'd
eventually ask them to leave. They earned that.

I won't suggest that we felt sorry for
them, for they clearly had earned their lot in life. But we tried not
to punish them for their lives. We simply didn't wish to sacrifice too
much of our lives to their bad judgment and behaviors.

These are not traditional people. Most
have addictions. Many are mentally ill, with most all the varieties
that make up that lot. And some are vindictive, dangerous folks. So
sometimes we've paid for our audacity in asking them to leave.

Our cars have been broken into in broad
daylight a dozen times over the years. Broken as in broken windows,
that of course we paid to fix so that we could still afford auto
insurance. Shortly after we told one guy to leave, he confronted me in
the parking area. It was a week after Easter.

“Damn rich doctors, living in your
house on top of the hill. You don't give a damn about the little
people.”

Sounded like some of my clients, but
that's another story.

“I'll bet you'd kick Jesus Christ off
of your property.

I looked him right in the eye.

“You aren't Jesus Christ.”

The woman had lived in her tent in the
back of the property all winter. We knew she was there, but she made
no mess, didn't walk through the parking lot when clients were
around, and you couldn't see her tent. She even had someplace else to
ah.....go “out”... for she left none of that mess either. Then a
guy moved in with her, bringing his drinking buddies.

When they began breaking bottles in the
parking area at one in the afternoon, we tossed them out. The woman
apologized. And I told her she was not the reason she had to leave.

A week later, the glass exit door at
the front of the hospital was smeared with human feces, locks,
handles, glass. It was a thorough, dedicated effort. We figure we know
who did it, and he wasn't Jesus Christ.

A couple of months ago, we found a new
nest way in the back. They'd rigged a camo tarp over the gap in the
trees, so we'd not seen them for some time. They'd built a two room
house from tarp and cardboard. One of my canine officers stopped by
with a problem with his dog, and he was kind enough to invite them to
leave. They left behind several truck loads of trash for us to clean.

A week later, my wife left the
passenger window of her car open two inches. The car was parked
behind the hospital. Someone urinated into the car. Pretty sure that
wasn't Jesus Christ either.

So yeah, we know these folks are not
right. And they can respond to normal situations with a variety of
abnormal, often harmful and even dangerous behaviors. Like monkeys in
the zoo that throw their shit at the people outside their bars, they
make do with the most powerful weapons upon which they can lay their
hands. And even, or especially when we try to help them, they
eventually turn on us. And they hurt us as best they can.

No, they don't know any better. They
likely think they are in the right. They likely think they are
entitled. They are making do with the most powerful weapons upon
which they can lay their hands to harm those they feel harm them. Us.

Kinda like those folks that show up on
the net with their virulent, irrational hatred of veterinarians. They
are condemned to their own reality. And when we try to help them, and
their reality collides with the actual reality, they simply cannot
recognize their roll, their blame, for the harm that they feel was deliberately laid upon them.
Instead, they turn loose their hate. And we are handy target for
their irrational response.

I suppose we should feel sorry for them,
but we won't. Still, we won't punish them for how they fruitlessly try
to cope with their own lives. But we will look both ways if we think
they are around. For folks like that make the world a more unpleasant
and dangerous place for the rest of us.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

A LOVELY guest post sent in by a truly happy veterinarian. Some of us *do* love what we do! :)

I love getting up and coming to work every day.

See, since 1985, I’ve been collecting client and staff
anecdotes. The short ones are
usually immediately jotted on a whiteboard in the hallway behind the exam
rooms, for the amusement of the staff and, well, me. It helps me remember them long enough so that when I get a
moment, I go to my desk and type them into a document called
Charlene-isms.

Charlene has been working here either full-time or part-time
since she was a teen. She is
petite, has a pretty face and great hair with which she can be a little
adventurous. A married mother of
two, Charlene is a high school graduate and a born-and-bred local.

Local here is south of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the
Mississippi, and small town/rural.
She was raised by her papa, a farmer who left her the farm and a nice
house. Charlene is pretty sharp
with her assets but that is where her sophistication ends. Her use of the English language is more
crumbled than colorful, and you must use your mind to insert a pleasing
Southern drawl for Charlene.

The sad part is that compared to my clients, Charlene is a
model citizen with good diction.
For my clients, you should auto-insert the type of accent you hear when
the local news covers a trailer park tornado.

My anecdotes cover a range of sins by clients and staff from
errors in grammar and syntax to mispronunciations, faux pas and outright
idiocy. I’ll start with an actual
Charlene-ism:

A
client called regarding her bitch, which was in heat and was in the throes of a
coital tie with a male dog.

Of course the panicked client
urgently said, “My two dogs are stuck together!
What do I do?”

I am practically omniscient within
my office and from a nearby room, I perceived the urgency of the call, could
picture the shocked look on Charlene’s face as she fielded the it, “Well,
what do you think happened? Do you think somebody put superglue on them?”

Picture me in slow-motion, arms
extended, mouth open in a silent scream, trying to run to the reception desk,
dive and intercept the call before it terminated. Picture Charlene, idly twisting a lock of hair around her
index finger as she suggested, “Well, could you try to gently peel them
apart?”

And see my anguish as I got there
too late to salvage the phone call.

* *
* * *

Charlene, planning a mountain vacation near several
whitewater-rafting establishments:

“Well, they are advertising this new thing called shuttle
tubing we want to try.”

After laughing hysterically, I drew a picture on the
whiteboard of an old school bus, loaded down with river rafters, the top piled
high with river tubes and rubber rafts.
Then I printed “Shuttle” on the side of the bus.

“Charlene,” I said, “They have a bus that shuttles
you to the river and back.”

* *
* * *

During a discussion about adventurous
sex practices such as nudist colonies and swingers, Charlene came up with this
jewel, “I don’t understand why some people want to have what they call a
twosome.”

Me, in reply: “Charlene, unless you’re flying
solo, sex is meant to be a twosome.”

* *
* * *

Out at the local Wal-Mart on her
lunch break, Charlene ran into a woman with long fingernails. In fact they were about six to eight
inches long and curling around in circles.

Charlene blurted out “Are those
real?” And then, “Well, how
do you…function?”

Apparently the woman replied something to the effect of, “Very
carefully” to which Charlene commented, “Well you should be in National
Geographic.

* *
* * *

A typical Charlene faux pas, said to
a client who was pregnant and her usually lush breasts were even more
voluptuous than usual, “Hi, Mrs. Smith, what can we do for Nipples today?” The cat’s name was Ripples.

* *
* * *

Charlene regarding a client with an
accent: “She has a Europe
accent.” We are still
wondering which Europe accent she was talking about. For the record, the client was Italian.

* *
* * *

Charlene, to client, “Okay, Mrs.
Jones, let’s get Kol-lol-NELL up on the scale and get his weight.” The dog’s name was actually
Colonel.

* *
* * *

Assorted other Charlene-isms:

“I
tripped on a dingleberry and fell down.” Regarding stumbling on a sweetgum ball.

“That
gave me the weeping willows.”
Regarding anything scary or creeping that gave her the willies.

“
That scared me so bad I turned white as a sheep.” Sheet, Charlene.
White as a sheet.

“I
didn’t do my toenails cuz I don’t wear toes any more.” Charlene, remarking when
complimented on her fingernails.

“There
seems to be some confusement about this,” Charlene was emceeing a horse show and said this over the
loudspeaker.

“I
was franticking.”
Charlene regarding how panicky she was after running over a Great Dane.

“Really? So it’s just been out there wandering
all over the world since then?”
Charlene, on being told there was a new Tropical Storm Emily in
2006. She thought 1993’s Hurricane
Emily had just been out there wandering around the world’s oceans and was
making a return trip.

“I’m
attached on them already.”
Charlene, telling a man that she has become very fond of kittens that
she is bottle-feeding. Calls to
mind Charlene being physically attached to three neonatal kittens, which is
frankly against the laws of physics.

“That
just bozzled my mind.” Yep,
and it boggled it, too.

And one of the most telling Charlene-isms: “Papa said I was the
smartest one in the family and I should have gone on to college.”

If you’ve ever wondered why your veterinarian is certifiably
crazy, look no further than his/her collection of stories. Dealing with staff and clients day in
and day out will make you bonkers.

The additional funds will be used for additional prevention efforts. What do you all think of this idea: commissioning a pendant that could be worn as an awareness tool. It could be an interesting piece that could be used to open conversations about this difficult topic when people ask about it.

It could also be worn by those at risk, a physical reminder always within reach that there is a whole community of people who care about them.

People who care so much they will send money sight unseen to a total stranger :)

Thanks again to the many generous people who responded to the appeal.

Sincerely,

Eden Myers DVM

You guys ROCK! It's so great that you all opened your hearts and your wallets to help fund this program. Seriously, we are overwhelmed by your generosity.

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